Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri presents this brilliant exploration of the Indian immigrant's experience in America—the inspiration for Mira Nair's film of the same name. Gogol Ganguli is born in Massachusetts to Ashoke and Ashima, newly arrived from Calcutta. While Ashoke, an engineer, adapts more easily to America, Ashima always feels her foreignness. Named for the Russian writer, whose book Ashoke credits with literally saving his life in a rail accident, Gogol knows only that he suffers from the burden of his ambivalent heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings deep empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along a first-generation path strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs.

"Quietly dazzling.... The Namesake is that rare thing: an intimate, closely observed family portrait that effortlessly and discreetly unfolds to disclose a capacious social vision."—NYTimes